Bringing dirty secrets out into the open means game’s rulers will be forced to
act - whether they like it or not

Every cricket lover reading the press over the last week has been mortified by the fixing allegations swirling around the game.

Now the International Cricket Council has to rise to the challenge by acting quickly to prove it has the stomach for sorting out this mess.

The ICC has launched an investigation into the leaks to the media which have led to some witness statements being made public. I accept the leaks must be hugely frustrating for the ICC and taken seriously because they question the competence of the organisation, but in some ways the information reaching the public domain has done the game a service.

It means the scandal cannot be swept away under the carpet. The ICC has to act because the public knows too much from reading about the statements of Lou Vincent and Brendon McCullum.

Fixing is cricket’s dirty secret, a little bit like doping in other sports, and it is now out there in the open. I agree fixing is not as rife as

drug-taking has been in other sports, but it has the potential to cause the same damage. When a sport is no longer played on an equal footing because one person is cheating or underperforming deliberately, then credibility is lost and it can be very hard to recover.

The players taking part in fixing are consumed with greed and a lack of respect for a game that has given them so much. I do not know how those people look at themselves in the mirror at night.

Vincent has confessed and, by becoming a whistleblower, has at least provided a small positive to a negative story. But I do not congratulate him or want to see him made out to be a hero.

He took money from fixers so he is a disgrace. He has thrown away everything. I played quite a lot of cricket against Louie. I always thought he was a talented player. He was a great strokemaker who had a brilliant reverse sweep he struck hard at a time when that kind of thing was quite unusual in the game. He was an excellent, athletic fielder and had a huge amount of talent. It was nonsense for him to think the game was not good to him. He was an international cricketer playing for his country, an overseas player in county cricket with a good career and a nice living that many people would envy.

He was obviously susceptible to being manipulated and that is something you could never guess from playing against him. It makes you wonder how many more players are harbouring dark secrets.

I have always said the best deterrent is a life ban. Anyone convicted of being involved in match-fixing should be kicked out of the sport for good. The message should be clear. If you want to take the risk and take a few quid to fix, then if you get caught cricket is over for you. You can never play again, coach or even go to a ground to watch a game.

The punishment fits the damage these guys do to the game.

They are clever too. The little signals they use to show to their handlers the fix is on are the same as innocent quirks of cricket such as a batsman pulling away as a bowler is running in or calling for a change of gloves.

It means at the moment when watching the Indian Premier League, or any game of cricket on television, if you see someone doing one of those things you instantly think something must be up. Every poor shot or bad over is treated with suspicion. That is the collateral damage caused by fixing scandals.

It is also why we need the ICC to act swiftly and firmly. I understand due processes have to be followed and that investigations across different international jurisdictions take time, but the ICC has been in possession of some of the witness statements for a decent period now and nothing has happened. It is no wonder stuff leaks out when you are slow to act.

For years we have heard rumours about certain players and matches that were supposed to be dodgy and very little has happened. It took a newspaper sting by the News of the World to expose the Pakistan team in 2010, and a player reporting a team-mate, which happened in the cases of Mervyn Westfield and Danish Kaneria, to bring the scandal at Essex to light.

This time it looks as if the evidence is more widely sourced but does the ICC want it all exposed? Probably not.